'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

Even though I didn't stay quite to the end, Friday's Black Plastic felt epic. I think this may have had something to do with listening to the Afghan Whigs on the way there (and then not getting horribly lost because this time, dudes, I remembered to check the full address). Possibly the drunkest I have been...since the creepers incident, in fact. Earlier that day I had climbed my first tree since then - one which had creepers, creepers I carefully avoided. Because my back is fine now, and as soon as possible you've got to get back on the horse. Or tree. But not back in the tree on a horse, that's a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

On Saturday, I felt somewhat puzzled by the Guardian having a big article about Momus and giving Gyratory System, whose free show I am attending on Wednesday, Single of the Week. I also watched the new Peep Show which, if it felt like it was moving a little fast at times both for comedy (surely there was an episode's worth of laughs in Mark as the boss?) and plausibility (could a multinational cut the British office loose with such disregard for redundancy laws?), was still Peep Show, and thus a sign of life in British comedy, which I needed. First, I'd recently attempted Home Time based on a smattering of good previews - but even being able so easily to identify with the premise (getting 'round 30 and London life hasn't entirely gone to plan), I was unable to overlook the unfortunate issue that it really wasn't very good. And prior to Entourage on Thursday I caught a little Katy Brand. Katy Brand's Big-Ass Show is very much like the smell of vomit, in that while you know and remember that it is bad, a first-hand encounter always reminds you that it is far, far worse than contentment has enabled you to remember. What Paul Kaye and her from The IT Crowd are doing in it, I don't know. Couldn't they have got more fulfilling work, like advertising formula milk to Third World mothers, or peddling their arses on street corners?
Then out again for what I had thought would be a walk through the park (albeit under apocalyptic skies) to a cheap pub where we'd settle in for a while, but was in fact a pub crawl. I'm generally sceptical of pub crawls, especially ones which take place on a Saturday night, in the West End, in the rain, without the full addresses of certain key pubs. But, once we settled in at the Bear and Staff, a good evening. Not least because quite by chance my table gave me a perfect view of all the passing hen parties. Odd observation: without exception, the most attractive members of any West End hen party are within the first third as they go along the street. Shock troops, I suppose.
More importantly, I also made a glittery conker, and called him Glittery Conker, for reasons I hope are obvious.

Yesterday I teetered over to Green Lanes, which was closed for a free festival - ostensibly a food festival but I think demand had surprised them, although I did have one rather lovely Turkish honey ball (your innuendo here). Caught a couple of Irish bands too, one of whom entertained me by covering 'Anarchy in the UK' for a family audience, at an event sponsored by local businesses and attended by councillors and MPs. The speed of assimilation accelerates such that I'm convinced Rammstein's new video (actual p0rn, if you didn't know) will be on ToTP2 within ten years. Then home where I ended up watching Beerfest, which as expected is not on a par with Seth Rogen or Will Ferrell films, but as bandwagon-jumping goes, isn't too bad either.

Finally, these bats are adorable.

Finally saw the hilarious Superbad on Friday; I loved it, though being shown it by a female friend I could see that her amusement was purer, in that it wasn't tempered with that terrible recognition anyone who's ever been a teenage boy must feel. Mentioning it to augstone later, he thought I was asking if he'd seen Superman; I wasn't, but if his secret identity were McLovin instead of Clark Kent, wouldn't that be glorious? Also on Friday night: got lost in Emirates, impersonated a chessboard, saw Sex Tourists/Doe Face Lilian/The Firm. As is traditional on Holloway Road love-ins, the roster also included one band I didn't know; as is traditional, they were pants, ie so pants that even being pretty girls in knee-length socks covering 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' couldn't save them. Let's hope tradition stops before the Gaff burns down, though.
Saturday and Sunday also fun, but Monday...that Monday was overacting. It hammered its point home with a scenery-chewing excess of Mondayness. I did not approve.

Glen David Gold's Carter Beats The Devil was, quite deservedly if unusually, a success both with the general public and with people I know. His follow-up has been delayed and delayed, but should finally be with us this year. Except, just like various bands have had exclusive distribution deals with various chains (mainly in the States), in the UK Waterstone's get Sunnyside in July, and everyone else has to wait 'til Autumn. What makes this even stranger - that's the hardback, ie the prestige edition aimed at people who have money to spare and really can't wait for the book. Which comes out in the US in May, and can be pre-ordered from amazon.com for $17.79. That's not quite the bargain it would have been two years ago, but if you're into the book enough to get a hardback in July, for about the same price you can get one in May instead. So what do Waterstone's and the UK publishers get out of this, except for winding up other booksellers?

Comics links: have a bunch of Grant Morrison rarities, including Batman and Superman text stories from 1986 - two decades before he got to do definitive runs in the main titles - and Alan Moore interviewed on the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Obama, and his grimoire-in-progress:
"We want it to be a lot of fun and we also want it to be exactly like the way you would have imagined a book to magic to be when you were a small child and had first heard of such things."
As someone who has attempted to read Crowley, that sounds like just what Doctor Dee ordered.

I'd been looking forward to Tin Man, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz starring Alan Cumming, Callum Keith Rennie and lovely, lovely Zooey Deschanel. Not only was I disappointed, but I don't even have much to add to USA Today's disappointment when they say that "Ambitious and intriguing though it may be, Tin Man is simply too long, too grim and too determined to impose a Lord of the Rings universe-saving quest on top of a simpler, gentler story." It perhaps doesn't help that Alan Moore so recently finished showing how you could reinvent that story to a darker end, so long as you had a point, rather than just mashing together various fashionable SF and fantasy tropes into a world with no thematic consistency or resonance, much less plausibility.